A boy lost in the Uinta mountains of Utah hid from search-and-rescue volunteers. He’s a poster child for the dangers lurking in the shadows of “Don’t talk to strangers.”
The 11-year-old took the order so much to heart that he didn’t see the difference between real dangers of being lost in the mountains and imagined dangers of talking to strangers.
He had probably learned about what Christopher Boone called stranger danger. Christopher is a 15-year-old autistic amateur detective in Mark Haddon’s novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.”
“Stranger danger,” Christopher says, “is where a strange man offers you sweets or a ride in a car because he wants sex with you.”
Christopher claims that danger isn’t the reason he doesn’t like to talk to strangers. He is not afraid of strangers, he says, because he can hit hard and he carries a Swiss Army knife – typical childhood hero stuff.
But, the real lost boy showed that telling children “Don’t talk to strangers” doesn’t make them safer – and can put them at even higher risk.
Consider just three points:
* First, strangers seldom hurt children and, when they do, talking usually has nothing to do with it. Fewer than 3 percent of the thousands of injured children referred to the Special Assault Unit of the Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office are assaulted by strangers.
Of that 3 percent, many are teenage victims who get hurt during other high-risk activities such as running away, partying with older people or using drugs and alcohol.
The man now charged with kidnapping and molesting two Idaho children and murdering one of them and three members of the children’s family, is an example of a dangerous stranger. But, like many such children, those two were not tricked by the stranger. They were physically overpowered. Talking was a nonissue.
* Second, almost all children injured by adults are hurt by adults they know well and who they have been taught to trust and respect. David Herget was a local example.
Bold type above the front-page article in The Herald on July 31 told much of the story: “David Herget used his church ties to earn a position of trust, which he used to meet and molest boys.” Herget seduced his church into labeling him safe, even after he had been convicted of child molestation. By endorsing him, his church helped him open doors into family living rooms.
The instruction “Don’t talk to strangers” is worse than an empty slogan when a trusted organization such as a church acts as a reference for a convicted child molester. The endorsement disarms his next victims.
The same thing has been true of priests, teachers, coaches and Scout leaders when they use formal trust positions to get access to child victims.
It must also be said that most abused children are injured by a family member.
* Third, telling children “don’t do” anything doesn’t do much good unless it is paired with guidance about what to do instead. When parents can pair a clear “don’t do” with a smart “to do,” they often don’t even need the “don’t do.”
Think about one “to do,” for example, to help replace “Don’t talk to strangers:” “If someone you don’t know stops their car near you and tries to talk with you, stay away from the car and keep walking.”
If a child is too young to understand that instruction, he or she is too young to walk to the store without an adult.
Solid “to do’s” are tangible enough to practice, and children learn better with behavioral practice. If parents don’t have time to practice safety behaviors with their children, or children are too impatient to practice, it is too early to walk anywhere on their own.
The bigger issues are about teaching children to recognize some of the more common dangers, knowing what to do to avoid or stop them, and how to handle themselves in unexpected, risky situations.
The next column will discuss some of those skills. For now, it is worth thinking about the fact that “Don’t talk to strangers” is not only impossible and useless. It can be dangerous.
Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. You can send e-mail to bill@ billfrance.com.
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